Active Member

Our third road trip in the 3 was down to L.A. to pickup a replacement solar panel for the array that charges the car (long embarassing story there).

The warehouse was in Temecula, and shipping for that one panel would have been more than the panel itself. So I thought it would be funny/ironic if we used the 3 to go get it.

We charged overnight to 95%, and Left Atascadero heading across 46 to I-5. Normally we'd take 101 as it's more direct, but the fires had closed that down. I figured we could make it to Santa Clarita superchargers easy... but I haven't been over the grapevine in decades (if ever - I honestly don't remember). We had agreed to drive at 65 to make sure, and of course the car was reminding us of that on the way to I-5. But when we got there, I just couldn't keep it at 65 when we were getting passed at 80. Where are all those suburbans going in such a hurry? So we bumped it to 70... still feeling like the old man in the slow lane who should have his flashers on.

The scary part happened going over Tejon pass (the "grapevine"). I had neglected to realize that it's a hill. A BIG hill. I mean a big, steep LONG hill. Switching over to the energy consumption to keep an eye on, the graph spiked way up high, like 800 wh/mile IIRC. We were doing 65. Even though the range indicator still read 110 miles, the "projected range was now reading 35 miles". And we were 45 from Santa Clarita. Had a to think for a second if I should just turn around and head back to the Tejon chargers at the bottom of the hill. But then I realized that what goes up comes down, and decided we could probably make it up on the downhill side.

Sure enough, as we peaked the hill with about 30 miles of "projected range", the graph went down below zero, and that number started climbing steady. The downhill side literally went on for miles, and as we pulled into Santa Clarita, it was projecting us with another 110 miles of range (I guess it was assuming we'd continued going downhill the whole say, just as it had been assuming all uphill before). Would be nice if that graph could somehow take into account your route and terrain and make a more educated guess.

Anyway, after supercharging to 90%, we arrived at my friends house in Corona , and started to try and load the panel into the trunk with the seats down. I hadn't bothered to take any measurements as I was sure it would fit. But this is when we found out that the panel was 39" wide, and the distance between the wheel wells was just 38". No problem, I figured we put it in at an angle. Nope, the trim (and I assume the wheels wells) actually get narrower at the top.
No matter how many different ways I tried to come up with, it wasn't going fit. It was 66" long, too long to go behind the front seats even!

Maybe if we removed the back seats, or if we removed the trunk trim pieces (seems to be a gap behind them). But the wife was having none of this talk on her new car. And so we had to leave it behind and wait for my friends next trip to wine country to get the panel.

In the end, it literally ended up being a weekend of visiting restaurants (and L.A. relatives) in between supercharger stops.

Top-Contributor

Good story! I flew to Temecula once and drove home (NY) in a Porsche. I drove my 3 up into the mountains last weekend, and the climbs sure do aggravate range anxiety. The snow didn’t help. I was playing in a band, and thought about using my performance anxiety medication. However...

If you maintain a steady speed and the downhill sections do not invoke regen, then hills will have no net effect on range on a route with no net elevation gain or loss. This is different than the bicycling case that gives us our gut feel about hills - you can’t maintain a steady speed on a bike. The reason is that at a steady speed, power for overcoming air resistance and rolling resistance are both constant. Gravity potential energy is conserved provided you do not brake, or involve the efficiency loss of regen.